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Kufuor: I never attacked the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda

Former president John Agyekum Kufuor has refuted reports that he attacked the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda during a recent speech he delivered.Speaking at the graduation of first batch of students of the Kufuor Scholars programme, Kufuor said: “we don’t just get up and say no to aid”.He explained that Ghana is yet to reach the stage where the country can survive without support from international donors.

Former president John Agyekum KufourFormer president John Agyekum KufuorThe former president added that “we need to build our negotiating skills up so we get a fair share around the negotiating table because whether from the East or West, none of them come because they love us. They come for what they can get and we must also learn what we want from them and learn to negotiate and take it.”

However, Kufour has now clarified his comments, insisting it was never an attack on the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda, as reported by certain media houses.

A statement from the ex-president’s office said some publications with “ill-intent” appear to have misinterpreted what he said.

“His [former President Kufuor] statement was in reaction to a media person’s doubts about the feasibility of ‘Ghana Beyond Aid.’ President Kufuor reacted that it was feasible and that the president can only be interpreted as having made a visionary call to pursue such pragmatic policies as would enable Ghana [to] overcome aid-dependency as quickly as possible. Such policies would include loans, aid, or foreign investments to undertake the requisite investments including industrialization and export development to accelerate our wealth creation at all levels. What is needed to be done, he said, is to negotiate well in win-win frameworks with a grasp of the geopolitics around us,” sections of the statement said.

Read the full statement below:

Re: President Kufuor’s Alleged Comments on ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’

The Office of Former President John Kufuor has come across several publications in the Ghanaian media alluding to the former president allegedly having cast aspersions on the current Ghanaian government’s ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda – the driving vision of its development agenda.

This office wants to make it clear that but for the ill-intention that appears to characterize these publications, they would not misconstrue his statement on ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ as a visionary agenda made with a conviction that, with the right policies and programmes, Ghana would see itself beyond aid in the foreseeable future.

His statement was in reaction to a media-person’s doubts about the feasibility of ‘Ghana Beyond Aid.’ President Kufuor reacted that it was feasible and that the president can only be interpreted as having made a visionary call to pursue such pragmatic policies as would enable Ghana overcome aid-dependency as quickly as possible. Such policies would include loans, aid, or foreign investments to undertake the requisite investments including industrialization and export development to accelerate our wealth creation at all levels. What is needed to be done, he said, is to negotiate well in win-win frameworks with a grasp of the geopolitics around us.

Indeed, we must be fair to ourselves as Ghanaians that ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ is the grand and achievable vision which we should seek to realize for the country. It doesn’t preclude us from using aid (loans included) to get there. Given the spread of the socio-economic and foreign policies which the government is currently pursuing, the call can be said to be already work in progress.

The former president wants all well-meaning and discerning people to cast their minds back to what the Marshal Plan of the United States did for West Germany after World War II. Germans utilized this aid from the US government under President Harry Truman to build their nation from the ashes of the war to create an economy which is the third largest in the world today. Of course, the German economy has, since the success of the Marshal Plan, graduated beyond aid a long time ago.

Such is what former President John Kufuor understands President Akufo-Addo wants the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ vision to achieve for our nation. And he has the full confidence that Ghana, under the able leadership of the current president, will ultimately get there.

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